At Heart
by Rurouni Star
Summary: [MK][oneshot] If everything were as it appeared on the surface, the world would be a much bleaker place.


Just a teency little blurb I thought of late at night.

**At Heart  
****By Rurouni Star**

Kagome used to think she was in love with Inuyasha.

Of course, Kagome used to think a lot of things.

She used to think that people were good at heart. She used to think that the world could and would become a better place through the efforts of just one person. She used to think that the world was fair and that everything would always turn out all right if she just tried hard enough.

Perhaps it could be considered a depressing thing that she'd learned differently. Certainly, she'd helped enough people, but it hadn't changed the fact that men were, on the whole, selfish, violent beings. It hadn't kept the things she'd managed to prevent from happening again, in some other place where she wasn't and might never be. But Kagome didn't see it as depressing – she saw it as growing up.

So, on the day she realized she had been in love with the idea of love, it disappeared. Perhaps more accurately, it had never actually been there.

The same day, they passed through a nameless village, one of so very many poor towns filled with near-serfs, and she learned that she still didn't know everything. Miroku asked them to stop, just for a moment, and he disappeared behind them. Kagome, curious, said she'd dropped something from her bag and followed after him.

She saw him enter a hut – watched him wordlessly hand a village woman a tiny bag that clinked with money – and moved out of his vision as he exited the sod building.

When Inuyasha asked him where the money had gone, he made a rather nice show of looking for it – then sighed and said he must have dropped it.

Kagome stared at him, and reevaluated her opinion of him, trying to fit the spontaneous act of generosity to the man. It took her until she was tucked into a comfortable futon at the house of a thankful noble to manage it. And she found that she was still growing up – that perhaps she'd only believed herself grown before – and that while the race as a whole was probably awful, there just might be enough that weren't like that to salvage it.

She noticed more and more things after that. A kind word here and there, a helping hand to those that needed it, even a concerned pat on the behind every once in a while. It was a strange thing she'd discovered, but it seemed that something did lay behind the lecherous, apparently vice-driven priest. Kagome found she almost liked it.

Things other than Miroku surprised her, of course. She watched Inuyasha cave to a little girl's smile and found that Shippo sometimes left out little bits of food for the squirrels. At the same time, sometimes in the same hour, she would witness the aftermath of a slaughter of helpless people – women and children, sometimes, faces frozen in the pained throes of death. Worst were the times it was made clear that other humans had been the perpetrators. And yet, a few hours more, and Miroku would be standing over the graves Sango insisted they always stop to dig, praying for the peace and happiness of the dead while he hid his face very deliberately from the others. Kagome wondered if he cried, when he saw such things. She certainly did.

It went on like this for a very long while – constantly believing she understood things and constantly having her notions turned upside down. It was disorienting and slightly frightening.

She mentioned something to that effect to Miroku one night, beside the fire. He looked up at her in surprise; then, he simply smiled and told her that, secretly, most people worth knowing felt like that their whole lives.

Feeling as though she'd been complimented in some way, Kagome smiled back and went to sleep.

It didn't surprise her then that one day, she learned something entirely new and at the same time something she must have known all her life.

Love wasn't an extraordinary, instantaneous force. Love grew.

And as Kagome watched Miroku, taking in his features, his smile, even his awful ponytail that she remembered wishing he would just cut off, she found that every single thing about him seemed handsome to her – whereas before, she had thought him utterly normal.

She realized the reason as she sat by the fire with him that night, listening to him talk and thrilling at his low, rich voice and his soothing words.

"You have a good heart," Kagome said very quietly, surprising herself.

Miroku seemed genuinely surprised at this. "I'm flattered," he said with a laugh, "but why would you say that?"

"You do things for people," she said, looking at him with a growing warmth in her chest. "Things you don't have to do."

He shifted slightly. "I _am_ a human being," he said, as though this explained everything.

Kagome shook her head. "But you're not _just_ a human being," she said, "and that's the point, isn't it?"

Miroku opened his mouth, as though to argue, but she interrupted him – "And you've always got something kind to say, to me and to everyone else," she told him. "You genuinely care for other people."

He seemed stunned by the idea – or perhaps just at the thought that Kagome might be the kind of person to insist on it as truth.

"I think you must have gotten me mixed up with some other priest," he said honestly, with a wry twist to his voice.

But Kagome merely smiled at him. And when he began to talk of different things again, she sat and listened for the rest of the night.

People could be good at heart, individually. And a little love and human kindness wouldn't fix everything – but that wouldn't stop anyone worth anything from trying. Especially not Miroku.

That was why she loved him.


End file.
